SURVIVING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

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Abstract
Carolyn Ellis and I have been partners for more than a decade. Shortly after we met in 1990, Carolyn sent me a draft copy of a book manuscript she had written entitled Final Negotiations (Ellis, 1995). The book described in detail the history of Carolyn's nine-year relationship with Gene Weinstein who died of emphysema in 1985 (Ellis, 1995). As I read through the chapter in which Carolyn told the story of her brother's death in an airplane crash, I felt as if all my senses were being pricked. I had never before read a social science article in which the researcher wrote from the source of her own grief, openly expressing what it felt like to be stricken so suddenly, refusing to gloss the layers of conflicting feelings, the exciting rush of adrenalin countered by the deadening fog of numbness, the waves of hope and despair, and finally, the struggle first to choke down, then to grope toward an understanding of the meaning of her suffering and loss.

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